Angel's Guard
by moste-piratical-ursh
Summary: Narcissa is dead and Draco is on the run from his father. His only hope Harry Potter. But who else will Draco find and what will it lead to...? DHr, 7yr, HBP spoilers
1. Fix You

**Angels Guard  
**By Moste Piratical Ursh

* * *

Chapter ONE 1

- Fix You-

Draco stood and stared at Narcissa. Her skin gleamed palely white under the glare. Ash blond hair streamed down many times over dirty hospital sheets and onto shiny hospital floor **- **the nurses' sensible shoes make tiny _click clacking_ sounds as they walk around her bed. Strip lighting is making his head reel. Eyelids flicker and his mother opens her eyes, attempts to look at him. Her face does not crack out of the death mask immobility.

He kneels on both knees and takes her hand in his own. It is fragile and cold, brittle like autumn leaves but white as alabaster.

A tear traces a single silent line down her cheek, the dewy moisture in its wake glinting and glittering.

Draco feels like his heart is being compressed into a tiny space just in the underside of his throat. He has never seen his mother weak like this. He knows she won't be here long. The bridge of his slender nose is aching, as though constricted; a pent up pressure of un-cried tears, burning in the corner of his eyes. He won't cry. He will make his mother proud. The longing ache of seventeen years: to make his mother proud.

Her slender lips, a bluish tint about them, mumble something indistinct. An incantation. Her voice no longer sounds sweet but bubbles and croaks. A trickle of blood leaves the corner of her mouth, to be wiped gently away on Draco's cuff.

Narcissa's hand contracts under his own, once; she is squeezing his own strong hands. Then it falls loose and limp between his cradling arms. Eyelids slide gently down over opalescent eyes for the last time, forever. Pale curved-moon slits reveal the milky whites of her eyes. She is perfect in death. He knows she is dead. Lost to him forever.

A silence has dropped over his world like a blanket. The antiseptic smell of the space around him fades. Even the room around seems clouded.

Slowly, he pulls aside the long streaming silver blonde hair, revealing the ugly red scars underneath.

Up and along the side and back of Narcissa Malfoy's neck sits the mark of her husband. Red, purple, brown and white scars that twist over the skin.

Draco strokes his mother's neck a moment, not crying. Then carefully he places her hair back and crosses her lifeless-cold hands across her chest.

A nurse coughs meaningfully, standing at the end of the bed with a clipboard, her eyes on the machinery beside his mother. Looking up, he sees a cluster of nurses at the end of the ward, staring at him avidly.

He stands up, feeling sick and dizzy. He has not eaten for at least two days. One last look at his mother, and then he strides from the ward, from the muggle hospital where the only person who ever loved him is lying cold and still on a dirty ward bed. And not coming back.

* * *

Many thanks to the wonderful beta Emily! She makes it readable! 

And now for a little poem:  
Roses are red  
Parma Violets are blue  
Do you love me, because I love you-  
You know how I feel, and you know what to do!  
R.E.V.I.E.W!

From your very own Ursh


	2. Yellow

**Angel's Guard  
**By Moste Piratical Ursh

* * *

Chapter TWO 2  
- Yellow-

Draco is entirely alone for the first time in his life.

His mother is dead.

Draco wanders down a small footpath near the river and gazes aimlessly around him.

A stark whiteness on the other side of the river. Riverside apartment blocks of the rich sit like broken jagged teeth against the craggy black gums of the city.

The stench of the Thames fills his nostrils. A musty pervasive scent riddled with moisture that seeps its way into his bones.Sniffing and snuffling, he would have a full-blown cold by the end of the night.

His legs are aching beneath him. He comes to an open expanse of mud, scattered with housing bricks and exposed pipes and pauses for a moment to gather his bearings. A footpath runs along and across it. Draco continues his lonely way, not caring.

He has been wandering since the early hours in a dazed shell shocked state although he knows that he will have to think about his situation sooner or later.

It is hard to see through the cloying darkness here, where the streetlights don't reach, but the waste ground seems to be closing in and taking on form.

Frost sparkles across to either side, covering the ground around him like a magical moss, reflecting the light of the orange night sky.

A large pond or a small lake is over to his right, and dark forms float on the surface, possibly sleeping ducks.

The tip of Draco's nose feels very, very cold. Standing in the middle of this park he realises how tired he is. His entire body aches and there is a tense weight across his shoulders. His head, nose and throat seem to have been bunged with clay and a deep throb is pulsing from between his eyes.

Staggering over to the coverage of some low lying shrubbery in sight, he slumps down, feeling oddly like a sack of rags but lighter, and does his best to wrap his cloak around himself. Then Draco sinks into unconsciousness.

* * *

Shining. An arch strung with pale yellow buds and curling green stems beckons. A weak, warm orange sunlight falls in dappled patches across a circular garden. A strange garden: it has the feel of a cathedral, as though it is extended far above, higher than can be seen. Solid, immovable and sacred.

Tentative steps through the arch. The ground beneath bare feet is warm and soft and springy. It seems to invite toe wriggling.

A pleasant scent of grass and a strong flowery oriental perfume characterize the curious space. The very air around is sparkly haze of gold-yellow particles, as though the air is infused with magic. Magic…

Soft laughter, musical, strings out from the centre of the garden. Draco walks slowly towards it. Hoping. He can feel it in his bones; _she's _there.

In the centre of the space is a small raised mound- covered in the same springy turf. A trickle of water is spilling from a slight muddy rut on his left. Bubbling water winds round the green mound becoming clearer, cleaner and widening as it goes, flowing off towards his right and draining away to somewhere unseen.

A surrounding wall of impenetrable golden fog marks the boundaries of the circular place.

He steps gently over the running water. Towards the centre where the same sparkling fog hides something. Something he wants very much.

The memory of laughter is strong in his ears.

A shining figure is sitting cross-legged in the centre of this garden. It stands up moves towards him in a swish of hair. The luminescence of the garden seems to cluster around the figure, as though every golden particle is straining to get closer to it. It obscures and lights the figure up in a warm glow…

Draco smiles weakly…

* * *

Draco wakes feverishly and stiffly, to a grey still sky and the uncomfortable sensation of being prodded with a large stick. The warmth of his dream evaporates in an instant.

He feels grit crumble away from his eyes as he opens them. Two stark figures loom over him, dressed in black.

Oh well, not unexpected. No need to brace himself for death since he's only half awake.

Draco shuts his eyes a moment before opening them again. The pain of breathing the frosty air through his raw throat and dry nose is affecting his thinking.

At last, he registers the fact of people and makes the effort to work out who they are.

What at first seemed like Deatheaters is something completely different. Two muggle …policemen… are leaning over him, trying to move the unusual tramp along before the park sees any of the public. The male of the pair is frowning, holding a baton as he looks down on this strange young man. The woman looks on wearily from a few paces behind, stubby fingers pulling a black jacket closer over a regulation vest. The chill is sharp for autumn.

Draco tries to speak but the words come out as a strange string of mumble.

"Come on, Mate. Up." He raises his eyebrows in exasperation.

Draco stagers up, looking around him. He's standing in a small frosty park, closed in by railings. A pond nearby reflects a steely grey of morning and last nights ducks float quietly on the surface in the shape of drinks cans and wrappers.

The man points at the exit to the park, the end of the footpath he had been following the night before.

"Come on, out."

Draco coughs and splutters some phlegm away, and tries his throat out again. This time managing to speak in a feeble rasp. He feels shivery and weak. Weaker than last night.

"Do you know where I can eat? Food?" he asks, looking from one horrified face to the other, wondering vaguely what they're gaping at. It hurts him to talk to these people. Filth.

He looks down at what they are staring at. His cloak has fallen open at the front, exposing his dirt encrusted clothes. His white shirt is caked in the unmistakable red-brown of dried blood. Narcissa's blood. Oh, that.

The police go to take something out of the holsters at their hips, but Draco is quicker. He brandishes his wand at them.

They stand still. Statues. They don't know what the wand is, but they see something about the blond haired, black caped man that alarms them. Perhaps it is the red sparks flaring from the end of his wand like damp fireworks.

He doesn't want to kill. Not innocents. Even muggles. There is enough pain and anguish in the world. He runs as fast as he can towards the park entrance, leaving two stunned police behind him.

Bolting through gardens, hedges, alleys, along quiet, deserted back roads and ducking along main roads, hood up, cloak tightly wrapped around him, hoping fervently that none of the people in these ridiculous roaring, speeding muggle contraptions would stop him or recognise him.

A lone figure trudging along in the gutter, sinister and furtive, face averted from the teaming rush hour traffic.

Where to go? The daze of yesterday, the depression, was wearing off and a cagey fear was gradually rushing in to fill the vacated space.

Hogwarts? Not a chance. They wouldn't have him back, not now. A danger to other students…

The Deatheaters? He had left their ranks forever. The truth of what they did… his mother… He knew better now.

A single idea was forming in the murky bottom of his mind. He didn't dare take it out and examine it yet for fear it would dissolve away like so much smoke beneath his fingers. At the centre of the unformed idea was one person. Memories of the night on the astronomy tower flashed painfully into his mind.

_Dumbledore grasped the battlements weakly, slumped half over has though the life force was being slowly drained from him... Standing, foolishly brandishing his wand aloft. Waiting for Dumbledore to tell him he was consigned to a life of damnation and attack him with a force of fury. Waiting for the end that would surely come. _

_But infuriated Dumbledore had looked on as he stuttered and failed. Offered him a way out. And then watching as he went over the edge. Fell to his death._

He had been weak, but not now.

_The whipping of a cape. Harry Potter materialises…_

And after those vague, blurry recollections, a strange dark rush of faces and blitzed scenes, fragments of memory scattered to create random sequences of imagination and reality.

Draco, dazed, exhausted, ill, knew exactly what he must do. He must find Harry Potter…

With these thoughts chasing one another like litter round his head he sank into a fitful sleep, full of the feverish dreams of illness.

* * *

Emily the fantastic beta. All praise her greatness. bows down

* * *

**felicitousmomento**: Glad you liked! Well, here is chaptwo- tell me what you think! hint,hintwink,wink  
**s.halliwell24**: voila- it had to be a muggle hospital, it means he can't say good bye and contributes to some of his, erm... spiritual... episodes (don't worry he's not going insane- there's a reason!)  
**Nanie-san**: I'm a bad, bad author.starts beating self with lamp, dobby style I'm a terrible updater. But I really like how this fic is going so I got the next chap up fast. Please review and tell me what you think!  
**hotaru**: here you go- now did you like this chap or not?  
**Icypanther**: Wow! Thanks- though I did start writing this before HBP, I've decided to modify it (slightly) to fit the plot line. Anyways, thanks for the compliments and keep reading!

Love it? Hate it? Review…


	3. Cold Hard Jump

Angel's Guard  
by Moste Piratical Ursh

Chapter THREE 3  
- Cold Hard Jump -

* * *

Narcissa stands on the top of the mound, a silvery figure in the middle of golden folds of haze. Ash hair falls gently around her face. She is strangely blurred; indefinite and undefined. Like an age worn memory or a photo slowly obliterated by sunlight, the colours and shapes fading away…  
She holds out her hands to her son.  
"Draco". The words don't exactly echo. They seem to come from all around, as though the foggy boundaries are speaking instead of the figure in front of him.  
He'd been hoping to come back here.  
Narcissa takes his hand.  
"Mother…"  
Her touch is cool and soft but faint. He feels as though she might dissolve away beneath his grasp. He holds on tight.  
"You must find him." She gazes at him from the distance of dream. Up close to her, looking at her is like inspecting the distance in a faint watercolour. No mater how close he gets there are details too vague to make out. Hazy. Blurred. Detailed but lacking in reality.  
"Harry Potter," says Draco to the watercolour mother.  
"Harry Potter," she repeats to him sternly. "You must seek him out. You must seek him out, NOW!" She speaks the last word with a resounding force that he had not expected here… He looks at the concern on her face and begins turning to leave…  
She pulls him back a moment to show him something… He struggles but she merely points.  
A …something… is emerging from the golden fog walls, following the outer path of the running water through the barrier. A low hulking shadow- shapeless. It crawls on all fours and sniffs at the soft turf with its face-maw. The running water that surrounds them also prevents it from invaded his mother's knoll.  
"Seek Harry Potter. He knows what you must do next. Do not let it find you, Draco, promise me you won't let it." She turns her back on the shadow beast. "Now you must go…" She squeezes his hand.  
Draco smiles at her and then turns to leave through the gate where a fantastic explosion of sensuous moon flowers are flourishing. He will do as his mother says… but already her words are slipping away from him and soon he will remember nothing of this place.  
Walking through the gate, he breaks into consciousness.

* * *

Hermione looks down on the ashen sleeping form of Draco Malfoy. Down on his angelic sleeping face, his brow delicately furrowed, dewy sweat moistening his forehead. He is lying curled on his side in the foetal position knees tucked up high. One hand is beneath his head, the other resting lightly below his mouth. A smile threatens the corners of her mouth- he looks so… angelic. A word she has never before even considered in conjunction to the purist fanatical. He is so still that he might be a statue. She wonders how someone so cruel and malicious can possibly appear so innocent, defenceless. Wonders if this is indeed the same man who had tortured her over her parentage for six years of her life. Not any longer though. Hogwarts is far behind her now.  
Hermione finds herself reflecting on the decision once more- the decision. The biggest decision of her life.  
It was the logical thing to do… Ron and Harry had of course been off Horcrux hunting and there had been nothing to stay for. Very few had chosen to spend this, what would have been her seventh year, at Hogwarts studying for NEWT s. McGonagall, headmistress by that time, had kindly recommended her for apprenticeship at St. Mungo's. And here she was. Making a difference…  
Her ambitions to become an auror had come to nothing in the face of reality. Things just didn't work out in real life. But hard-earned grades had left her free to pursue any other career of her choice, even if she wasn't of the standard to be a dark wizard catcher.  
Suddenly, one pale hand whips out and clasps her wrist with a grip of iron.  
"Granger," he growls. "What am I doing here?"  
He looks severely at the woman struggling in his grip.  
"If you don't let me go, I will be forced to set off the alarm, and believe me, Malfoy," she rolls the name of her tongue with irony. "I will have you done for assault before you can say 'unfair trial'."  
The young man looks up at her with a cold, hard, appraising look in his flinty eyes. She tries desperately to look braver than she feels- she had been taken unawares during a moment of uncharacteristic sympathy. The threat is bluster. Her standard Healer's alarm is, in fact, lying in the apprentices' lounge. Slowly she places her hand into the empty pocket of her Healer's robes, as if to trigger an imaginary alarm.  
Four truly unexpected words:  
"Can I trust you?" he asks in a low whisper, eyes locked on hers. His jaw is set and a slight crease has formed on his brow.  
Hermione shivers, intimidated by the frank intensity of his gaze. His icy eyes pierce right through her.  
Does she trust him? Her child-hood arch enemy, asking for her help, obviously in deep trouble. What is she supposed to do? She knew what Ron would do. She had a fair idea what Harry would do. But she had always tried to think morally; always tried to rise above petty feuds and prejudices…  
"Yes." She replies in kind. She finds that her usual bedside manner has deserted her in the face of his questions. "Yes," she whispers again.  
Draco's relief is immediate and obvious- as he lets go her wrist, the expression of blazing intensity is slowly replaced by an extreme wariness and a deep exhaustion that sits heavy on every line of his face.  
"Is this St. Mungo's?" he asks.  
She nods. She doesn't trust her voice. And then, finally…  
"Muggles found you. You were unconscious, in a front garden I think; they brought you into a muggle hospital. The ministry became aware of you and had you transferred here immediately. Standard procedure." She sees the look on his face. "Nothing to worry about. There's nothing seriously wrong. Exhaustion. Minor cuts and scratches. We've given you necessary potions to heal the cuts, and we are going to keep you in for observation. As soon as Healer Ceridwen gives you the all clear you can go." He seems satisfied with her- for a time at least. His attention moves away and the dark cloud settles over him again.  
Hermione feels pure relief and takes a couple of steps backwards, away from the bed and out of the reach of his powerful grasp.  
It is as though his very awareness of her holds her trapped by him. His manner compels her to listen to him, to follow him, as much as she hates herself for it. He is a born leader.  
What has happened to Draco Malfoy? For him to seek help in a Mudblood, one of Harry Potter's closest. A Gryffindor…  
Suddenly his attention snaps back to her.  
"What-" Draco starts, but is cut off by a screeching low-pitched siren that shatters the peaceful quiet of the ward.  
A trainee Healer, Hermione recognises the howl immediately. Voldemort- or, more likely, his Death Eaters. The dark mark had been put up within the vicinity of the building.  
Draco's face bears a look of utter betrayal on its patrician features, mingled with a fury so extreme it looked as though it might burn. She could never have imagined she would feel guilty at any expression of Draco Malfoy's face, but here was the undeniable evidence of remorse twisting her heart.  
"Granger, I thought we understood one another other. I thought you weren't going to set the alarm off." he delivers this in a fearsome monotone, his quaking hands belying a entirely different emotion.  
"I didn't. And that's not the Healer's alarm." she hisses, surveying the other patients on the ward. She is in charge. It is her duty to get them out, count them, and check them off. But for once, Hermione lets her instincts take over- Malfoy is obviously in danger and, as her quick mind soon deducts, he is most likely the cause of the Death Eaters sudden appearance.  
"Get up. Quickly!" she orders. Draco doesn't waste one second questioning her, and she is thankful. Time is of vital importance. She watches him pull a dark cloak and robes over his head. If her hunch is correct then the security at the front foyer and the reception would not hold out more than a few minutes, perhaps ten. A few moments at most to locate the ward. The room would be stormed by death eaters any minute now- if it is indeed Draco they're searching for.  
She bends close to him, speaking into his ear so that the others on the ward don't hear.  
"That siren, it means Death Eaters. The Dark Mark has been put up somewhere close." Hermione raises her tone ten-fold "Out! Everybody out! NOW!"  
Anxious patients began to stand up, look round at one another for reassurance, obviously not twigging the severity of the situation.  
"OUT!" Still, nothing.  
Hermione takes a deep, deep breath, weighs up the prospect of death eaters against that of mass-hysteria and instantly decides upon the later.  
"You-Know-Who is here!"  
While not strictly true, its effect is immediate. The occupants of the ward run, screaming and shouting towards the double doors at the end.  
Hermione suddenly becomes aware of Draco next to her, his presence powerful, commanding. He is urging the other patients out with threatening wand movements and caustic drawling. A look of disgust and condescension is curling his top lip as the ward's occupants file out sheep-style.  
She is impressed with his speed in registering the situation, his reactions. They are certainly unexpected. Helpful, if not quite pleasant.  
The last patient is out.  
Hermione grabs his large hands, so pale next to her honey skin and begins to drag him in the wrong direction, towards the end of the ward where the tiny window casts its thin light. Towards a large and very door-less cream coloured wall.  
Draco's eyes widen at the sudden contact, and he panics as she leads him in the wrong direction, but quickly catches up with Hermione's pace. It seems to her that he is resigned to certain fate. He seems to expect death, and his lack of struggle, questions, insults even, gives her a deep uneasiness.  
Perhaps he's grown up... Perhaps he's desperate.  
They run full out, skid and pelt towards the seemingly blank wall. Hermione yanks them aside at the last minute; slams Draco painfully into the wall. She thrusts open an inconspicuous door and drags Draco out. He throws it shut behind them.  
The height hits them both immediately like a vicious slap with a mouldy haddock. The twosome takes tentative steps onto the rickety scaffolding that sways ominously beneath them. The sky is huge up here.  
The morning breeze, brisk and frigid and strong hits her skin leaving it feeling raw and numb under the slick coating of sweat and tears on her face. She is more fearful than she would like to admit.  
A dull muffled thumpf from the floor below leaves the entire building quaking in its wake. The fire escape simply sways out a little further from the building.  
Immediately the wailing quiver of fire engines and police sirens fill the air.  
Death Eaters on the Floor below? She knows they won't make it down in time. There is only one alternative. Draco seems to have realised, too. Their wet hands slip about in a tight clasp. She raises her wand… waves the featherweight charm. She hopes that her patients have managed to escape.  
The whooshing of the wind and the howl of sirens are too loud to speak over. Instead she turns, finds herself looking into the terrified, ice-grey eyes of the blond. Draco's expression is desperate.  
She mouths the words-

-one-

-two-

-three-

Together they jump. Hand in hand. Falling through the whipping air. The cold burning. The noise deafening.  
Hermione's eyes are shut tight, her mouth wide open in a scream that doesn't come, her mind following the words of her forgotten catholic faith…  
Draco's eyes are wide, wide open but unseeing. His brain permeated with a numbing nothing that seeps in to block the fear. There is only the knowledge of the coming end. Cold, hard asphalt is waiting at the bottom, a badly cast charm their singular hope. They hit the road hard.


End file.
